I was wandering through the blogosphere, curious to find out what physicist-bloggers elsewhere had to say about the so-called "end of the world". On the excellent blog "Cosmic Variance" I found an article by Mark Trodden: Calling a Crackpot a Crackpot which I strongly recommend. Many of the comments on his posting are also very good (No.14, suggesting we serve a restraining order on the sun, is particularly hilarious).
The above paragraph is hopefully my final posting on this topic. Otherwise I would be guilty of suggesting (I might be guilty of that already) that there really is a debate between qualified scientists on this issue, which there is not.
3 comments:
A well-written (as expected) description of the Giddings/Mangano paper regarding the doomsday scenario of the LHC as well as other safety issues are discussed in layman language by Michael Peskin
here. Not that it will satisfy the 'crackpots' but one can only try so much.
I dont think anybody (layman) thinks that black holes could swallow the earth or something like that... its just the media trying to get some attention...
Ramanan: you're an optimist I must say. The US is full of laymen who believe exactly this - and they also believe in Judgement Day, and many find a connection between the two! India is not much better, TV channels here had a field day correlating the impending disaster with Hindu mythology, and people were lapping it up.
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